A Few Questions for Carbon

[Clare S]

One of the most fascinating companies in 3D printing over the last two years has undeniably been Carbon. The company's high-speed CLIP technology allows for 3D printing in unprecedented times and has, since coming out of stealth in March of last year, seen incredible attention -- and growth. Carbon, now with a 180-member strong team, has been hard at work, bringing their M1 3D printer to market this past April, along with a growing number of materials to create both prototype and end-use parts, backed by an ever-increasing number of investors and supported by a higher frequency of customer interest and use. 3DPrint.com had the opportunity to interview CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Joseph DeSimone to learn more about his insights into Carbon, CLIP technology, and the 3D printing industry. Read more at 3DPrint.com: https://3dprint.com/159412/a-few-questions-for-carbon/

[brbubba]

This company is so full of shit. Their machine is $250k for a 3 year lease. Pretty much eliminating a value-add for prototyping short of running an around the clock print shop or high volume manufacturing. Add to this the fact that the build area is a joke and you have someone that's riding on the coattails of a patent without doing much to innovate.

[curious aardvark]

they do seem to be struggling to produce machines.

At the tct this year, their stand lacked pretty much everything.
No printer, no printed samples, not even a video of the machine.

The reason given was that there were no spare machines, everyone made went out to a customer.
But given the tct is the uk's biggest 3d print show, surely that's where you would make an effort to generate new customers.

Just downloaded the pricing sheet - holy crap these things are moronically expensive.
If they can actually find enough idiots to pay this kind of money - then yeah, marketing geniuses !
https://s3.amazonaws.com/carbon-stat...on_Pricing.pdf
$40,000 a year on a minimum 3 year contract (you're way out bubba). And you DON'T ever own the printer.

But they do deliver and show you how it works - for $10,000 !
But only $5,000 for a second printer - how kind of them.

At the end of the day it's just an sla machine that prints a bit quicker.

Let's put this into a little perspective:
build volume:
W 141 mm -D 79 mm - H 326 mm



Pretty odd shape and poor in the x and y dimensions.

Does it do multi material and multicolour prints ? No.

So for the same money you could buy and own a multicolour colour, multimaterial pinter with larger build volume.

Given the massive number of 3d printers that can be had for $40,000 a year - I can't see how carbon can stay in business on a longterm basis.
At the moment it looks like they are living on investments based on their 'clip' technology.
But that can only ever pay dividends if carbon actually make a sensibly priced machine and sell bucket loads of them.
Or licence the technology to a company or companies who make sensibly priced desktop printers.

Renting small build volume sla machines for $40,000 a year - is not a sustainable business platform.

It's a heavy duty business cost for a machine which is manifestly NOT a heavy duty industrial 3d printer.

People with that kind of budget are not usually complete idiots - they can use google. I just don't see anyone with half a brain taking carbon up on this deal.